Help! My kid might be an artist

an introduction for a book about intensely creative kids. Someone should write this book (probably not me)

Maybe you’re in denial. Maybe they are: you think your kid might be an artist. It’s okay. I know this is a terrifying prospect. First, take a deep breath. Now, congratulate yourself—you have just stepped onto the path of acceptance! I are here to tell you that this realization happens and it happens all the time. The good news is that many of us creative people have grown up into responsible, reasonable and even successful adults. Some of us even have children of our own. My partner and I have a son who is four and a half. When other parents of children in our son’s school recognize us as artists—perhaps because of our general aloofness and the paint that sticks stubbornly to our fingers and shoes—they have questions. These questions usually get strung together like this:

What should I do? She just wants to draw [or paint/rap/sing/sculpt] all the time and I am not sure how to support her. I work as a [job not typically associated with creative work] and I don’t even know where to begin. Do artists even make any money? How can you even tell if a work of art is good or not?

The parent will then patiently listen to one of us explain that love and acceptance will go a long way, that there are in fact many career paths available to creative people, and that yes, there are objective measures of quality in the arts just like any other discipline. But these brief answers never seem to satisfy. It’s become clear to me that many parents looked at their highly creative children as almost alien species.

Because many of the thousands of (non-artist) parents at the university where I work are skeptical about the possibility of a life well-lived in the arts, and because I frequently hear from my own painting and drawing students about their parents’ concerns, I have become an ambassador of the simple ideas that arts professionals exist, and that the creative kids on creative paths will be just fine with a bit of early support.

Like many artists, my partner and I do not have artist parents, so we know something about being aliens. My partner’s mother is a finance professor—about as far as one can get from abstract expressionist. And as it turns out our own son would often rather perform analytical tasks than draw. He is comfortable around strangers in ways we never were and he genuinely seems to enjoy—wait for it—math. Gasp!

This got me thinking: how did I end up here? How did I become so fortunate to have lived such a rich creative life? To what do I owe my parents? What advice would I give to other parents whose kid or kids are intensely creative like I was growing up? Some of these questions are beyond the scope of the post but here’s touching the surface.

Parenthood today is full of anxiety even for parents of children who seem to be good at studying and test-taking and put their toys away occasionally. For families who have arts-curious children but may have no concept of what success in a creative field might look like, the usual anxieties about the future are exacerbated.

One thing many people do not understand is that not all artists live tortured lonely lives. These stereotypes are hard to combat. Many artists live fulfilling, stable lives thanks in part to the sense of community that a life in the arts can help to cultivate. Artists work in varied fields. And some artists are more comfortable in bright neon athleisure wear than in black cloaks. Although artists from all backgrounds have lived through periods of intense loneliness or poverty or faced challenges that were difficult to overcome (I subsisted largely on apples and lived in a warehouse with no heat for while) there is hope.

When parents take an active role in helping their children inhabit and celebrate creativity, kids can avoid the “tortured” artist thing.

While it is true that regrettably, there’s continuing inequality in the arts just as there is in other fields, now is a great time for anyone to become an artist. The definition is as inclusive as ever and there are many opportunities if one knows where to look. Although many art history books remain populated largely by white American and European men, today there are more women and minorities than ever in the arts and many institutions are actively working on ways to create more opportunities for artists from underrepresented groups. The arts are for everyone. Oh, and there are even artists who can do math! Which brings me to a caveat about all this.

Lately there are efforts to put the arts into the sciences (STEM to STEAM) or to communicate the value of creativity itself as a tool that might be used by thinkers in all kinds of disciplines. Surely these are noble efforts and should be applauded. Everyone makes use of creativity in their lives and in their work. However, I think some people—some children—are almost unwittingly propelled toward a life that includes the arts. This may be difficult for some folks to understand. Although we have all heard the adage that “every child is an artist” let’s face it: some children are more creative than others (psychologists call this “divergent thinking”.) And some children are compelled by a powerful seemingly supernatural force to make things almost all the time. 

Typically, a person goes to school, maybe goes to college and picks a major, and a career that makes use of their interests and skills. For many artists, this is not how it happens. Rather, becoming an artist is something that can almost feel like it’s happening to a person at a young age; it’s an identity that sneaks up on many of us often before we have even considered the possibility of careers—or of poverty. Or at least, that’s how it was for me and for my partner Mei and for many other artists I know across fields as diverse as music composition, sculpture, painting and public art. The artist identity sometimes seems almost to come from the inside, even if it is successfully repressed for a while by parents or future artists themselves.

Still, I can’t sugarcoat it—leading a creative life and attempting to make money by doing so is a bold proposition today just as it has been for generations. But it is not impossible, and is surely not as unlikely as many folks believe. Often, children who come to imagine themselves living a life focused on making things become more and more committed to this idea in adolescence, during precisely the time that parents become more and more concerned about their kids’ future livelihoods and career prospects. Although this tension is normal it need not be fruitless: rather than denying the realities of the challenges of finding creative work, parents would have more success working with their creative kid than they will talking their kid out of making things (a proposition that, as any artist will tell you, is essentially impossible). At the very least, parents should help their children find realistic strategies to sustain meaningful engagement with the arts in young adulthood and beyond even if those kids ultimately do not find themselves working in an art-related field. 

While any parent could benefit from providing time and space and understanding for creativity to flourish in the home, for intensely creative kids this patient support is vital to not only to the child’s creative development to but also to their sense of self-worth and self-confidence into adulthood. Let’s call these children, with some irony: ICK’s. Intensely Creative Kids. Haha okay maybe that’s not it, just trying it out. Who are they?

Intensely creative kids can often be found working alone (but sometimes collaboratively) on imaginative projects. They are still building their own elaborate worlds even as their peers become increasingly preoccupied with other pursuits. They are eccentric and sometimes poorly understood by their classmates and teachers. They may struggle to engage with traditional rewards systems that privilege the more readily measurable feats of academic and athletic performance. They often feel outcast. Is this you? Is this your kid? With a bit of support parents of ICK’s can understand what is motivating their children, what opportunities are available to them and how to support them in the crucial years of childhood and adolescence so that they can grow into the unique, amazing, successful artist they are destined to be.